December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Upcoming DES Challenge
by Lyle Seaman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:10 PM 1/7/97 -0000, Liz Taylor wrote: > I don't know anything about bank ATMs >and the protocols they use, but I presume the PIN is stored on the card >single DES encrypted. If this is so, anyone can take an ATM card, attack it >to recover the key and then use that key to recover the PIN for any stolen >ATM card of that bank (or that branch). Hopefully, the ciphertext/plaintext >pair that RSA announces will be a real target like this, with the actual key >disabled. Once the key is recovered, the press can then claim that ATM >cards are not safe any longer. Your self-assessment is admirably accurate, but the presumption is not.

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add me
by KOO HOE-JUN 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm interestin mail list me too e-mail:kooom@aminet.co.kr

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FC97: Anguilla, Anyone?, Part 2
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anguilla, Anyone?, Part 2 FC97 Update, Cypherpunk Edition. January 8, 1997 (FCountdown: A-47) (Pass this around. Please! :-).) Financial Cryptography 1997 Conference and Exhibition: February 24-28, 1997 Workshop: February 17-21, 1997 http://offshore.com.ai/fc97/ Sponsors: The Journal for Internet Banking and Commerce <http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/JIBC/> Offshore Information Services <http://www.offshore.com.ai/> e$ <http://www.vmeng.com/rah/> See your name here :-) <mailto:rackliffe@tcm.org> Just before the end of the year, Vince Cate posted a note to the FC97 organizer's list and noted that a.) we had a bunch of people signed up for both the FC97 conference (and for the workshop), that b.) those people's companies probably wanted to book the registration expenses in 1996, and c.) didn't we think it was time to charge their credit cards and thus d.) actually have a conference? Soooo.... We're actually going to have the world's first conference on financial cryptography. It'll be: a.) in Anguilla, b.) during last week of February, c.) while it's snowing here in Boston. (Hot damn!) Which, to confess all, is why I had the idea to begin with, though the idea has grown a bit since. :-). It's a good thing that we're actually going to have FC97, too, because, if you look at the "Deductible Junkets" section Wired magazine, we're the featured deductible junket for January. It would indeed be a drag to have made it to that pinnacle of net.trendiness and not have a junket to deduct, as it were. Not that said net.trendiness was unwanted. No-sir-ee. Somewhere after imagining what it would be like to *not* to shovel snow out of my driveway, and *very* shortly after remembering there was a cypherpunk on *Anguilla*, namely Vince Cate, who could help me with that problem, the absolute very first picture in my head was exactly that Wired article. FC97 as the featured deductible junket in Wired. I could actually see the headline: "Financial Cryptography, February 1997, Anguilla, BWI. The world's first peer-reviewed conference on financial cryptography." I also figured that only someone as pathogically possessed of the trait of schmooze as I was could conceive and pull off such a feat. So, now, I figure, I can die, right? I mean, I've just made the net.schmoozer's hall of fame. :-). Well maybe not die. Not just yet, anyway. I'm not quite finished, you see. For my next trick, I have to actually get *down* there for the conference. To do that, I pretty much need to sell the conference out. Which, if you haven't guessed, is why I'm currently in your face with another one of my gigantic "Anguilla, Anyone?" rants. :-). I have to practically sell FC97 out because, when you work with other people, the guy with the idea (that's me), especially a guy with an idea for something he has absolutely *no* capability to actually *do* at all, has to take a back seat to the folks who actually *do*, er, do things, and hope that their effort makes enough "thing" left over for him to, um, claim to have done a bit of it himself. (Yeah. That's it... Any questions? None? Good. Class dismissed...) So, the first thing I'd like to do here, now that we're actually going to have a conference, is to thank those "people actually doing things" for FC97, in chronological order of their involvement in this genuine, Wired-certified, deductible junket... Vince Cate, the aformentioned Anguillan cypherpunk, of Offshore Information Services, in Anguilla <http://www.offshore.com.ai/> is the most important person to thank. Vince's work so far has been positively heroic. Vince got us a place to have the conference, the InterIsland Hotel, a very nice 150-seat conference facility with space to spare for 10 exhibition booths (before we need to find an exhibition annex, anyway ;-). He's made arrangements with Cable and Wireless to give us as much bandwidth as we need, practically on demand, proving that, yes, you can have a technical conference -- with T1 access -- in the wilds of the eastern Carribbean. He also made deals with the banks down there to handle money wire and credit card processing, not to mention making arrangements with the vendors of every internet payment method our customers have requested so far. Including, I'll add here, ecash, from Digicash, BV <http://www.digicash.com/> and Mark Twain Bank <http://www.marktwain.com/>. This is important, because, with the help of Lucky Green of Digicash, and the folks at Mark Twain Bank, Sameer Parekh of C2NET <http://www.c2.net/> and FC97 will make the world's largest ecash transaction to date. C2NET will purchase its booth for FC97, sometime later this month, entirely with ecash. You heard it here, first, folks, and, of course, you'll hear more about it later. Believe me. :-). Lots more. I haven't even warmed up the tonsils yet... Right now, as we speak, Vince is the guy on the ground in Anguilla, doing all kinds of things, from renting tables and curtains and power for exhibition space, to specifiying the hardware and network for the workshop and exhibition, to scanning the blueprints of the conference space into GIF files so we could have a floorplan to sell booths with, to getting estimates so we could cost and budget the conference, to, heh, collecting the actual money (in nice round non-taxable numbers) at <http://www.offshore.com.ai/fc97/>. In case you haven't figured it out, Vince is at the core of the whole enterprise, and he deserves much thanks for all the work he's done. Not to mention all the work he's gonna do.:-). Remembering we're at A-47, and counting, and all. After I got Vince to step up to the plate for all this work, we talked to Ray Hirschfeld, <mailto: R.Hirschfeld(a)cwi.nl>, of CWI, who then graciously accepted our offer of the FC97 conference chairmanship, in exchange for untold hours of completely donated labor. (I mean, at least, if everything works out, the rest of us could actually get paid.) Ray organized a conference committee of absolute stars in the digital commerce and financial cryptography firmament, including our own cypherpunk law professor, Michael Froomkin. The list of conference committee luminaries, includes, to read my own latest press release, "the inventor of Millicent, the project manager of EU's CAFE digital cash project, the holders of Citicorp's digital cash patent, two famous scholars in cryptography and digital commerce law, the President of International Association for Cryptologic Research, and the Chairman of the Taskforce on the Security of Electronic Money for the G-10 Central Banks." One of these people is so far up the food chain at the Fed that people there practically have to cross themselves when they say his name. So, you can see, Ray is one amazing conference organizer. Vince and I should have known better, but we couldn't possibly imagine how successful Ray would be in gathering talent when we asked him to be the conference chair. Ray and his outstanding committee are now reading all the papers that have come in during the last few months; from all over the world, from a great bunch of authors, on just about every topic in financial cryptography. Submissions are now closed, but the announcement of the selected papers will be made to the authors on January 18th, and shortly after that, he'll announce the conference agenda to the rest of us. You heard it here, first, folks, and, of course, you'll hear more later. Believe me. :-). Right about the time I had the idea to ask Ray if he wanted to chair the conference, I thought about how I could possibly extend my "Island Time" back another week, and thus avoid the snow shovel even longer. :-). I thought about a feeder activity of some kind for the conference, and, for a peer-reviewed conference like FC97, there's no better feeder activity than a workshop of some kind. I thought about the need to evangelize, to big corporate cheese (technical and otherwise), about how the world was going to go when we started doing secure financial transactions on insecure public networks. About the technology of financial cryptography and digital commerce, and not just running the old Mastercard through a web-page form, either. Said cheese were the people most in need of understanding this impending new reality of ubiquitous geodesic markets, I figured, because, frankly, as people who made technology decisions for big companies, it was going to affect their businesses the most. Fortunately, they were also the people who could afford to pay for a week-long intensive workshop on the subject. Especially if it was in Anguilla. :-). A financial cryptography bootcamp, as friend Rodney Thayer called it later. I thought about how cool it would be to get actual cypherpunks-who-code, who were not likely to get to the conference under their own power otherwise, to run this workshop. After the week of the workshop was over, both cheese and cypherpunks-who-code could go to the conference and hang out like they owned the place. I'd pay said cypherpunks-who-code a competitive rate for their time, plus fly them there and back, and feed and house them for three weeks: the week before the workshop getting the bugs worked out, the week of the workshop/bootcamp itself, and then the week of the conference, again, hanging out like they owned the place. Everybody would be happy. So, when I thought about all that, the first person who came to mind to actually run this was, of course, Ian Goldberg <mailto:iang@cs.berkeley.edu>. Ian, besides making himself famous last year for breaking Netscape's SSL implementation into little bitty random bits (to their eternal gratitude, I'm sure), is one of the canonical cypherpunks-who-code these days, having done more pounding on the ecash code library than anyone else outside of DigiCash, *and* building an FPGA DES-cracker, all while getting a Ph.D in his spare time. :-). After much arm-twisting, because he was so busy -- and, because, frankly, before Ray got that amazing conference committee, we were all nervous about it -- Ian consented to running the workshop. Sometime next week he'll come out with the particulars of the workshop itself, including what they're going to teach, and, who's going to be there to teach it, contingent on how many workshop participants we get. We're planning on a 5-to-1 cheese-to-cypherpunk ratio, so how many cypherpunks-who-code we can bring to Anguilla depends on how many workshop seats we can sell. Fortunately, we've had people already pay for the workshop sight unseen, and, with a little push, I expect we'll have enough participants to actually have the workshop. When that happens, you'll hear about it. Believe me. :-). [Oh. By the way, notice that I've now weaseled myself onto Anguilla *two* weeks before the conference starts. But wait, there's more. Guess who has to be there one week before that, to get ready for the instructors. *All* February in Anguilla? Moi? Nawwww.... ;-).] Speaking of selling stuff, Julie Rackliffe, <mailto:rackliffe@tcm.org>, is someone I've known for as long as I've been in Boston. She was practically the first person I met when I started at Fidelity. She now does fund raising and function management for the Computer Museum in Boston, and has done some work in a similar vein for the Digital Commerce Society of Boston (DCSB), which Peter Cassidy <mailto: pcassidy(a)world.std.com> and 30 cypherpunks and geeks-with-suits started with me last year. When FC97 started to look bigger than a few guys on a beach with an internet feed, I knew I needed someone who could professionally manage a small but high-profile conference and exhibition, and I asked Julie to help us out. When we thought we couldn't do this without corporate sponsorship to cover our sunk costs, Julie stepped up and took on raising that too, even though it later turned out that we really didn't need sponsorships to make FC97 fly. ("Bootstrap" is now our collective middle name...) Anyway, we're still taking booth orders -- each booth ($5,000) includes 2 complimentary tickets to the FC97 conference -- and Julie's the contact for that <mailto:rackliffe@tcm.org>. Also, if your corporation wants to sponsor (for $10,000) an official, FC97-sanctioned, :-), lunch or dinner with accompanying recreational/schmooze opportunity, we'd be more than happy to oblige. You get a banner ad on the web site, your company's name on our outbound correspondence (see above), a nice discount on boothspace, and 4 conference tickets. And a tatoo on my forehead. Okay. Maybe not a tatoo on my forehead. Since I had to licence the name "Bob" from Microsoft a couple of years ago, there's not much room up there next to the Windows 95 logo, anyway. Again, email Julie <mailto:rackliffe@tcm.org> for information on sponsorships, and we'll *talk* about the tatoo. So, much thanks to Julie, who's also going to actually manage the conference,logistically and administratively, during the week of FC97, for all the work *she's* going to do, too. Finally, I want to thank someone who's not officially on the FC97 team. That person is Sameer Parekh of C2NET. Not only is he going to buy a booth at the FC97 Exhibition, he also graciously donated a copy of Stronghold, which we're going to be using as the Official Commerce Server of the FC97 Workshop, Exhibition and Conference. We're going to be teaching financial cryptography with Stronghold in the workshop (and Ian's new ecash server, by the way...), and it will be taking orders on www.offshore.com.ai real soon now. In ecash, among other things, which he'll be using to actually purchase his booth from us. Thank you very much Sameer. In that regard, we also want to thank Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> who got us set up with the ecash shopware to make digital cash transactions possible for FC97. Thank you very much, Lucky. <Shameless-Huckster-Mode, RDF=11> Okay. Now I'm going to talk about why it's in *your* best interest to *immediately* go to <http://www.offshore.com.ai/fc97/>, shell out big bucks, and register for either the conference ($1,000. Nice round tax-free numbers, remember?) or the workshop and conference ($6,000 total), or the exhibition (booths start at $5,000), or even sponsor FC97 itself (for a cool $10 grand), so that I, too, can go to Anguilla, and not shovel snow in Boston in February. Like the rest of this rant, feel free to hack out some of the points below and paste them into any appropriate form or application if you need them to justify your trip to someone with budgetary authority. :-). If you need better reasons, let me know, <mailto:rah@shipwright.com>, and I'll think up some more. One of them has to stick. It *has* to, or <shivver> I have a date with a snow shovel this February. 1. FC97's in Anguilla. It doesn't snow in Anguilla. :-). 2. FC97 is the very first conference ever on financial cryptography. If you go there, you'll make history. Since financial cryptography will change the face of economics and finance as we know it, you'll make economic and financial history. Since economic and finance make the world go 'round, you'll make world history. Pick a history. Any history. You'll have made it. But, you've gotta *be* there to do it. 3. The papers at FC97 will be peer-reviewed, and FC97 is sanctioned by International Association for Cryptologic Research. The papers to be presented at FC97 are being reviewed by some of the best people in the field, and the papers themselves will represent the best thinking in financial cryptography today. 4. The people who wrote the papers will be right there for you to talk to, because they've all committed to come if their papers are accepted. 5. FC97, like the Cannes Film Festival, was designed not only to show the state of the art in the financial cryptography business, but to provide time and space for that business to take place. There is exhibition space so that people can display their technology. The conference runs from 08:30 to 12:30 (with breakfast provided, to get you there that early), so that the afternoons and evenings can be used for business networking, for corporate presentations, or for individual or group recreational opportunities. Participants are encouraged to bring their families. 6. FC97 is in Anguilla. Anguilla is an interesting spot, politically and economically. It has no taxes of any kind except import duties (no, bringing your laptop to Anguilla is not importing it, because you're taking it home with you), and would be a great place to run an offshore transaction server, which, of course, is why people like Vince Cate are there now. In addition, having FC97 in Anguilla proves the futility of the current US cryptography control regime. We will have all kinds of cryptographically strong financial technology at FC97. That includes C2NET's Stronghold product, through which FC97's own registration transactions are being processed, and which we will be using in the workshop to instruct people in financial cryptography systems development and implementation. All of that technology will get to Anguilla, a tiny speck in the Carribbean Sea, just fine -- *without* being exported from the US. 7. If you were interested in negotiating with foriegn cryptographic businesses to *import* their technology into the US (a sad state of affairs, but a fact of the modern market), or, in contracting with foriegn businesses to license your cryptographic technology overseas within the limits of the ITARs or EARs, FC97 would seem to be an ideal time and place to do so. The market for financial cryptography is changing dramatically, and Anguilla will have the highest concentration of financial-crypto-clueful on the planet for the week of FC97. All of them talking to each other, networking, and doing deals. It is an opportunity which any prudent business developing financial cryptography, or significantly affected by it, should not ignore. 8. FC97 is chance for those of us who only know each other on the net to actually meet face to face and start to develop the kind of personal relationships and trust we'll all need to create the future of finance on the internet. Since legal enforcement of contract on a ubiquitous international network will be at best problematic, if not impossible, reputation and character will be the only enforcement mechanism we'll have for quite a while yet. (Actually, if it was good enough for J.Pierpont Morgan and the Rothschilds, it's probably good enough for us.) And, while the whole point to financial cryptography is that we won't need to have face-to-face contact for financial relationships, much less regulation, there's still, currently, more bandwidth in a conversation on an Anguillan beach to develop that trust relationship than there is anywhere on the internet. So, at the core of the business, people are going to have to actually *know* each other, at least until the market gets too competitive. This is no different from any other nacent software market. Steven Levy, in "Hackers", talks about how computer game software firms, ostensibly competitors, used to vaction with each other in the early development of that business. That makes sense. One of the reasons that Peter Cassidy and I started DCSB was so we would have a place to go to talk financial crypto with other people who actually cared about it. Do it for week, and add a beach and beautiful weather, and you've got FC97. 9. The FC97 workshop, February 17-21, is being taught by some of the best implementors of cryptography technology today. Ian Goldberg <mailto:iang@cs.berkeley.edu>, the workshop chair, knows more about the nuts and bolts, the implementation and construction of financial cryptography systems, particularly new systems using so-called digital bearer certificates, than probably any other person alive, including the people who invented and sell the technology itself. The people he's picked to teach the workshop with him have the most hands-on experience in developing and implementing cryptography, particularly in a financial context, of anyone in the world today. People who take the workshop will learn which cryptography is strong cryptography, what isn't, and why. They will learn all the current and proposed internet payment systems out there, which ones are worth knowing about, which ones aren't, and how to tell whether a new system is worth learning. They will learn how to set up a secure internet site from scratch. They will learn how to build a transaction server on that site which will use any of the current popular transaction protocols. And, finally, at the very frontier of financial cryptography, workshop attendees will learn the theory and operation of systems for handling and issuing digital bearer certificates. Systems which do not rely on offsetting book-entries, or financial regulators, to settle issues of non-repudiation, and are thus well suited to ubiquitous worldwide commerce. The workshop will consist of 40 hours of intensive instruction and lab time, with a 24-hour open lab and T1 internet access. The workshop admission is limited to 20 attendees. The cost of the workshop is $5,000. 10. It's in Anguilla. There's no snow in Anguilla. </SHM, RDF=0> :-). Okay. I've ranted. There will be more later, certainly. I expect there to be a press release from C2NET about Stronghold at FC97, and the purchase of their booth in ecash. And, as we sell more booths, press releases from the companies who buy those booths, about their products, and why they've decided to go to FC97. Again, if you're interested in buying a booth at FC97, please contact Julie Rackliffe, <mailto: rackliffe(a)tcm.org>. Sometime next week Ian Goldberg <mailto:iang@cs.berkeley.edu>, will come out with more formal information about the FC97 Workshop. If you know anyone who could benefit from such an experience, please have them contact Ian for details. Shortly after the 18th, expect to see, from Ray Hirschfeld, the selected papers and the actual agenda for the conference itself. So, if you have any questions about Anguilla itself, send them to Vince Cate <mailto: vince(a)offshore.com.ai>. If you have any questions about the content of the conference, you can send them to Ray Hirschfeld <mailto: R.Hirschfeld(a)cwi.nl>, but, bear in mind, he and the program committee are behind the old chinese wall right now, reading papers, so you probably won't get an answer from him until the papers are selected and the agenda announced. If you want a booth or to sponsor the conference, contact Julie Rackliffe <mailto: rackliffe(a)tcm.org>. If you want to talk about the workshop before Ian Goldberg <mailto:iang@cs.berkeley.edu>, cranks out the formal call for participants please contact him, because the contents of the workshop will depend to a great deal on the initial skill set of the participants. And, of course, if you want to thrash me about the length or content of this rant, feel free. All errors are mine, especially those said in shameless-huckster-mode. :-). <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> Finally, the website for FC97 is <http://www.offshore.com.ai/fc97/>. Register now. Please. My toes are *cold* already... Cheers, Bob Hettinga (one of two) General Chair(s, the other is Vince Cate), Financial Cryptography 1997 Conference and Exhibition: February 24-28, 1997 Workshop: February 17-21, 1997 http://offshore.com.ai/fc97/ Sponsors: The Journal for Internet Banking and Commerce <http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/JIBC/> Offshore Information Services <http://www.offshore.com.ai/> e$ <http://www.vmeng.com/rah/> See your name here :-) <mailto:rackliffe@tcm.org> ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox, e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://offshore.com.ai/fc97/

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Algorithm Identifier for CDMF
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Grab your ankles, ladies and gents. This won't hurt a bit... Cheers, Bob Hettinga <Wait, isn't that a freight train in the distance?> --- begin forwarded text From: Bob Baldwin <baldwin(a)rsa.com> To: "'set-dev'" <set-dev(a)terisa.com> Subject: Algorithm Identifier for CDMF Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 09:41:08 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: owner-set-dev(a)terisa.com Precedence: bulk The SET protocol needs an algorithm identifier for a 40 bit variant of des called CDMF for use with the AcqBackMsg. This note defines the value for that identifier. --Bob Baldwin -------------------------- ALGORITHM IDENTIFIER FOR IBM's CDMF ALGORITHM INTRODUCTION The Commercial Data Masking Facility (CDMF) is an application of DES that weakens the DES key from 56 to 40 bits using a key shortening algorithm patented by IBM. Licensing information for the CDMF patent is available from the Director of Licensing, IBM Corporation, 500 Columbus Avenue, Thornwood, NY 10594. This note defines the ASN.1 algorithm identifier and algorithm parameters for IBM's CDMF that has been registered by RSA Data Security Inc. RSA Data Security, Inc.'s Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) object identifier is 1.2.840.113549 (2a, 0x86, 0x48, 0x86, 0xf7, 0x0d in hex), as registered by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In the following, the prefix "rsadsi" refers to that object identifier. All object identifiers registered by RSA Data Security begin with this prefix. CDMFCBCPad This is a Cipher Block Chaining mode of operation with padding of a 40-bit variant of DES. It is defined in: IBM Journal of Research and Development, "The Commercial Data Masking Facility (CDMF) Data Privacy Algorithm", Volume 38, Number 2, March 1994. Following the ASN.1 style of the "Agreements for Open Systems Interconnection Protocols: Part 12 OS Security", it is defined by: ALGORITHM MACRO ::= BEGIN TYPE NOTATION ::= "PARAMETER" type VALUE NOTATION ::= value(VALUE OBJECT IDENTIFIER) END -- of ALGORITHM IV8 ::= OCTET STRING (SIZE(8)) CBC8Parameter ::= IV8 CDMFCBCPad ALGORITHM PARAMETER CBC8Parameter ::= {iso(1) member-body(2) US(840) rsadsi(113549) encryptionAlgorithm(3) 10} -- In hex, the CDMFCBCPad algorithm ID is: -- { 0x2a, 0x86, 0x48, 0x86, 0xf7, 0x0d, 0x03, 0x0A } The PARAMETER is needed to specify the Initialization Vector, which need not be kept secret. It is 8 octets long. This mode should be used to encrypt multiple blocks, where the full message is available. The random IV prevents codebook analysis of the start of the chain. The IV may be public. This mode will propagate a single bit error in one plaintext block into all succeeding blocks, and will propagate a single bit error in the ciphertext into a garbled plaintext block on decryption as well as a single bit error in the next plaintext block. The following padding mechanism should be used if the data to be encrypted is octet aligned, unless the security policy dictates otherwise: The input to the CDMF CBC encryption process must be padded to a multiple of 8 octet, in the following manner. Let n be the length in octets of the input. Pad the input by appending 8-(n mod 8) octet to the end of the message, each having the value 8-(n mod 8), the number of octets being added. In hexadecimal, the possible paddings are: 01, 0202, 030303, 04040404, 0505050505, 060606060606, 07070707070707, and 0808080808080808. All input is padded with 1 to 8 octets to produce a multiple of 8 octets in length. The padding can be removed unambiguously after decryption. Editor's Note - If adding the padding rules would cause existing implementations to break, this should be registered as a separate algorithm identifier. Note, however, that [FIPS 81] specifies its own padding rules for padding binary data, in the absence of application-defined rules such as those above; those rules require an indication (which could be conveyed as an algorithm PARAMETER) of whether the data has been padded or not. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox, e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://offshore.com.ai/fc97/

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RE: The FAGGOT list
by Brett Carswell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Aga Wrote: > >That is another FAGGOT coming out of the woodwork! >> > Just how many KNOWN faggots are on this list? [snippo] > >Most of the above men are apparently FAGGOTS, since they >conspire to censor Freedom Of Speech on the InterNet, under >the guise of "spam elimination." Actually, is all a front >for censorship by homosexuals on the InterNet. >[more snippo] >> > All of these who are faggots must be labeled >> > and watched, as we know that faggots are the worst censors. Could someone please forward me the URL of the FAGGOT (are the caps manditory?) detecting software for mailing lists. I feel pretty left out as almost everyone else know who the FAGGOTS are. Is this the same software that detects Cocksuckers or does Dr Dimitri have something of his own. Maybe we could all band together and come up with something that detects Nazi moderators as well. Brett

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by imakumon＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Trade secret liabilty [Was Re: Sandy and I will]
by Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

a reliable friend wrote to me to say ... <quote> The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (which has been adopted by a majority of jurisdiction) provides for liability of a third party who knows or has reason to know that information he recieves or discloses was acquired by improper means or under circumstances giving rise to a fiduciary duty OR that he knows to be proprietary but which he recieved by accident or mistake. Depending on the facts, the language could encompass a moderator who knew about or turned a blind eye to distribution of trade secrets on his list. </quote> A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin(a)law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here.

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RE: [STATS] Cypherpunks subscriptions on and off
by Juriaan Massenza 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi Dale, I am usually lurking cypherpunks, I decided to reply to your message just to give you an idea of why _I_ subscribed to cypherpunks. (English is not my first language, not even the second, please forgive me my grammar monstruosities) I am very intested in crypto, _application_ of crypto, remailers and security, I usually trash flames, political/social implication of crypto and of course commercial emails. Looks like the last 3 categories are the main topic. I don't have problem in bandwith but I think that if I was forced to use a phone connection instead of a digital one like I have now I will unsubscribe to the list since it will not be worth for me to spend hours in downloading a lot of emails knowing that I will trash the 90% of them. I don't want to criticize people who talk all the time about the above mentioned 3 categories because it is in my understanding that someone is interested in those and I will remain subscribed to the list just to pick up the real juice. Best wishes to all, Juriaan >-----Original Message----- >From: Dale Thorn [SMTP:dthorn@gte.net] >Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 1997 4:06 AM >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Cc: freedom-knights(a)jetcafe.org >Subject: [STATS] Cypherpunks subscriptions on and off > >The following table shows cypherpunks subscription activity >for the period 12 Oct 1996 thru 07 January 1996. > >Date ~Days #Subs Gain Loss Gain / day Loss / day >----- ----- ----- ---- ---- ---------- ---------- >10/12 n/a 1361 n/a n/a n/a n/a >11/04 23 1353 211 219 9.2 9.5 >11/30 26 1299 173 227 6.7 8.7 >12/18 18 1262 120 157 6.7 8.7 >01/07 20 1291 151 122 7.6 6.1 > ----- ----- ---- ---- ---------- ---------- >Totals: 87 655 725 7.5 8.3 > >Interpretation: > >Unless the reversal of gain/loss in the 5th data row is permanent, >c-punks are losing 0.8 bodies per day, or 294 subscribers per year. > >Actually, the constant high turnover suggests something else: >Many people join the list and get back off again due to the high >volume and their own personal time constraints. Unless Sandy can >cut *way* back on the number of posts to the list, i.e. excise a *lot* >more postings than just the blatant Spam and "Timmy is a....." posts, >it won't make any difference to those people who come and go. > >In effect, Sandy is going to have to cut the number of daily posts >(to the moderated list) from, say, 100 per day down to, say, 20 or >25 per day. This would certainly be a goal of his, since most of the >subscriber comments I've heard indicate that even 50 posts per day of >"relevant political/social commentary" is way too high for them. > >As to the net loss in subscribers, the moderation of the list could >have a substantial effect on the number of subscribers short-term, >but whatever trend we have here will continue regardless, since the >real value and character of the list is not determined by the posts >which are removed (unless it were that some of the character and value >is going to be removed), but by long-term factors which are to be >expected when the principals get older, less involved, and less >contentious (like Sandy, wanting to avoid conflict). > >

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RE: [STATS] Cypherpunks subscriptions on and off
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In October 1993 the membership was around 500 (or less, I think). Three years later the membership is around 1500 (to account for the "cypherpunk-list@xxxxxx" type addresses, which are lists-within-lists containing numerous "hidden" subscribers). .. Blanc

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URGENT: Fri 10Jan 9:30AM Wash,DC: Karn appeals, come to the hearing!
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Friends of crypto freedom should definitely attend. The courtroom holds approximately 50 people, and we'd like to fill it. Show Judges Williams, Ginsburg and Rogers the importance of the case. This is the first time that a crypto export case has hit a Court of Appeals, and your rights are very much at stake here. If you're in the DC metropolitan area, come on out on Friday morning! Show Phil Karn you support him as he challenges the export controls. --John] RESEARCHER KARN APPEALS, SEEKING TO OVERTURN IRRATIONAL ENCRYPTION RULES "Books are OK to publish, floppies are not" policy Washington, January 8 - Laywers for researcher Philip R. Karn, Jr. will argue in court this Friday that Government restrictions on distribution of encryption software violate the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution, and are "arbitrary, capricious and invalid" regulations. This week's hearing, on January 10, 1997 at 9:30AM in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is open to the public at 333 Constitution Avenue, Washington DC. The Government will argue that its rules are its own business, which courts should not oversee, and that it is legitimate to regulate free speech and publication when the government is uninterested in suppressing the content thereof. (The government actually has a strong interest in suppressing the public's ability to understand and deploy strong cryptography, but has managed to convince the district court of the opposite.) The lawsuit is complicated by the Government's introduction last month of new encryption regulations. President Clinton ordered on November 15 that the regulations be moved from the State Department to the Commerce Department. Over Christmas, the Clinton Administration published its new Commerce Department regulations, which are effectively identical to the State Department regulations, and put them into immediate effect. Mr. Karn's case only named the State Department. In an unusual switch, the Government is arguing that it should be able to replace the State Department with the Commerce Department as a defendant, in the hope of keeping the case alive. (Most defendants would be happy to have the case disappear. The State Department appears to be hoping they will get a better decision in this case than in related cases.) The State Department regulations at issue were struck down in December by Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in a similar case brought by Professor Daniel Bernstein in San Francisco. Judge Patel called the regulations a "paradigm of standardless discretion" which required Americans to get licenses from the government to publish information and software about encryption. No court has yet ruled on the new Commerce Department regulations, which include the same provisions that were declared unconstitutional. "This case clearly raises an issue of fundamental importance to cryptographers and computer programmers generally," said Kenneth Bass, lead attorney in the case. "The fundamental issue is how the courts will treat computer programs. Books are entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment, but the trial judge in this case decided that source code on a diskette does not enjoy that same protection. Programmers immediately recognize the utter irrationality of this distinction. We now will see whether the appeals courts will also see it that way." "Phil Karn's case illustrates both the irrationality of the encryption rules and the depths of the bureaucratic mazes which protect them," said John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which backed the suit. "The idea that the First Amendment protects the author of a book, but not the author of an identical floppy disk, is ridiculous. All books, magazines, and newspapers are written on computers today before print publication, and many are also published online. Yet here we have Government lawyers not only defending their right to regulate machine-readable publication, but also arguing that the courts are not permitted to re-examine the issue. Their argument amounts to `Trust us with your fundamental liberties'. Unfortunately, a decade of NSA actions have amply demonstrated that they are happy to sacrifice fundamental liberties when it gives them an edge in some classified spy program. Unless there's a clear and present danger to our nation's physical security (which we have seen no evidence of), our citizens' right to speak and publish freely is much more important to American national security than any top-secret program." Civil libertarians have long argued that encryption should be widely deployed on the Internet and throughout society to protect privacy, prove the authenticity of transactions, and improve computer security. Industry has argued that the restrictions hobble them in building secure products, both for U.S. and worldwide use, risking America's current dominant position in computer and communications technology. Government officials in the FBI and NSA argue that the technology is too dangerous to permit citizens to use it, because it provides privacy to criminals as well as ordinary citizens. Background on the case Mr. Philip Karn is an engineer with a wide and varied background in radio and wire communications. He has given many years of volunteer work in the amateur radio service, amateur satellite service, and in the Internet community. He is the author of the freely available "KA9Q" internet software for DOS machines, which forms the basis of many amateur radio experiments as well as several successful commercial products. He has written and given away various cryptographic software, including one of the world's fastest versions of the Data Encryption Standard (DES). Phil also did the initial research into encrypting Internet traffic at the packet level. Mr. Karn's home page is at http://www.qualcomm.com/people/pkarn/ . In 1994, author Bruce Schneier published _Applied Cryptography_, a best-selling encryption textbook which included some fifty pages of encryption source code listings, including very strong algorithms such as "Triple-DES". As an civil libertarian, Mr. Karn asked the State Department whether the book could be exported; they replied that it was in the public domain and could therefore be exported. Mr. Karn then created a floppy disk containing the source code from the book, and asked if the floppy could be exported. The State Department determined in May 1994 that the floppy was a munition. Mr. Karn would need to register as an arms dealer to be able to export the disk. After several administrative appeals, Mr. Karn filed suit in September 1995. The suit asks a court to declare that the decision was invalid because the distinction between publication on paper and publication on floppies has no rational basis, and because the decision violates Mr. Karn's right to publish the floppy. Judge Charles R. Richey dismissed the case in a strongly-worded 36-page opinion. "The plaintiff, in an effort to export a computer diskette for profit, raises administrative law and meritless constitutional claims because he and others have not been able to persuade the Congress and the Executive Branch that the technology at issue does not endanger the national security. This is a "political question" for the two elected branches under Articles I and II of the Constitution." Mr. Karn, whose effort was motivated by concern for civil rights rather than profit, appealed. This week's hearing is the first public hearing in his appeal case. The regulations at issue in the case, which prevent American researchers and companies from exporting cryptographic software and hardware, are a relic of the Cold War. The secretive National Security Agency has built up an arcane web of complex and confusing laws, regulations, standards, and secret interpretations for years. These are used to force, persuade, or confuse individuals, companies, and government departments into making it easy for NSA to wiretap and decode all kinds of communications. Their tendrils reach deep into the White House, into numerous Federal agencies, and into the Congressional Intelligence Committees. In recent years this web is unraveling in the face of increasing visibility, vocal public disagreement with the spy agency's goals, commercial and political pressure, and judicial scrutiny. ABOUT THE ATTORNEYS Lead counsel on the case are Kenneth C. Bass III and Thomas J. Cooper of the Washington law firm of Venable, Baetjer, Howard & Civiletti, who are offering their services pro bono. ABOUT THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit civil liberties organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free expression, and access to online resources and information. EFF is funding the expenses in Mr. Karn's case. The full text of the lawsuit and other paperwork filed in the case is available from Phil Karn's web site at: http://www.qualcomm.com/people/pkarn/export/index.html SOURCE: Electronic Frontier Foundation CONTACT: Ken Bass, lead attorney, +1 202 962 4890, kbass(a)venable.com; or Shari Steele, EFF Staff Attorney, +1 301 375 8856, ssteele(a)eff.org; or John Gilmore, EFF Board Member, +1 415 221 6524, gnu(a)toad.com

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